June 30, 2021
Part 1: A White Family’s Attempt to Do This Together. We had no idea what was about to hit us.
One year ago today, my family embarked on a journey together to better understand racism.
This isn’t a happy story of togetherness and joy. It’s a real story about a white family – with racist tendencies and zero history of talking about difficult, painful things – trying to dismantle our own white supremacy. You should laugh! It’s kinda ridiculous that we decided to do this together.
But, I promise that this story isn’t full of dispair, either.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing the journey, including what I learned, the resources I found most helpful, and I invite you to share your experiences, too.
To protect their privacy, I’ve decided to use pseudonyms and exclude markers of familial relationships.
“Doing nothing is no longer an option for me.”
You might be asking, “why the hell would you do this?” I’ve been asked that almost every time I’ve shared that I’m doing this work with my family. I can’t speak for them, but here is my personal why.
It was early June 2020. My personal anxiety and loneliness were at crushing levels. When I saw the news of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the Central Park Karen, all in the space of two weeks of each other, it had a profound effect on me. We had just lived through four years of the rise of the white supremacy movement, and then in the face of a global pandemic, instead of bringing all of humanity closer together, violence against Black people was growing more common.
I couldn’t sit by any longer. I had to do something. I also had no idea what to do or where to start.
On our weekly family Zoom call, I shared my despair and helplessness. It was quickly echoed by the other liberal (Dave) and the moderate (Bree), but the conservatives (Angelica and Ed) were not sure what was going on, only that “the liberals are upset about something”.
We asked the conservatives to watch the video.
The following week, Angelica shared her outrage that Derek Chauvin could be so malicious, and her shock that “I didn’t know this kind of thing was happening!”
Brave Dave suggested that maybe we could meet weekly for learning and discussion – we all promptly agreed!
Angelica had one major caveat, though. With the 2020 election cycle coming up, she asked that we leave political discussion out of the racism discussion. Naively, we agreed. 😂🤦♀️
“We just can’t talk about politics.”
Each of us is passionate about our politics. Unfortunately, we completely disagree on most things.
Dave suggested this 21 part overview put together by the American Bar Association. It’s not too high-brow, nor is it particularly in-depth, so it was perfect for beginners. We decided to cover 2 parts per week or an 11-week commitment.
Week 1: Wary but Committed
Our first reading was about Democracy from the lens of Black history. We were uncomfortable immediately.
My family doesn’t talk about our problems easily or often. We are prone to long, cold silences, followed by an eruption of anger, with little to no resolution. Problems fester, lines are drawn, someone capitulates…did I mention that we’re not good at talking about the hard stuff?
So it was no surprise that this first reading put us all into a wary posture. I was hoping to avoid an argument at the first meeting so we would continue this discussion. We edged around the painful realizations that the article outlined.
Candice: “I’m a little overwhelmed with this information.”
Angelica: “I’m here to listen.”
Bree: “I know I have some blindspots.”
Ed: “I don’t know what to say.”
Dave: “It’s up to us to educate ourselves. We can and should do better.”
No one’s feelings got hurt, and by the end of the discussion I thought, “Wow, I really hope that this experience can bring us closer together.”
A few days later, I realized that no one’s feelings got hurt because we weren’t really discussing our feelings or personal experiences with the materials. We had never collectively talked about any of our experiences with racism, because, truly, white people don’t talk about racism. We don’t have to.
Week 2: “I’m going to make mistakes”
I saw this as an opportunity for me to be a leader in my family group.
One of the greatest leadership qualities is showing vulnerability. I learned this from Brené Brown’s research and witnessed the power of it through people I’ve worked for, including Wendy Chin, Sudheesh Nair, and Brian McCarthy. Their ability to be honest when they didn’t have the answer, brave to show emotion publicly, and genuine care for my personal life made me incredibly loyal to them.
Before we started the second week’s discussion, I shared this:
“I know that I have racist thoughts and that I have a lot to learn. I’m going to mess up. I’m going to say something hurtful without realizing it. I’m going to need you to help point that out to me so I can learn. I won’t get it right every time, but I will do better.”
Slowly, but surely, we started pushing each other to recognize our racist ideas and to probe further when someone shared only surface-level information.
